Comcast pulls YES Network for more than 900,000 customers

More than 900,000 Comcast customers in New Jersey, Connecticut and Pennsylvania have been without the YES Network since early Wednesday in the wake of a carriage dispute.

Even by the standards of such disagreements, the two sides have been particularly blunt in early attacks on one another, with Comcast taking aim at YES' most visible and important product: the Yankees.

"YES Network carried approximately 130 baseball games this past season and well over 90 percent of our 900,000-plus customers who receive YES Network didn't watch the equivalent of even one quarter of those games during the season, even while the Yankees were in the hunt for a playoff berth," Comcast said in a statement.

Using math such as that would make many regional sports networks look less robust than fans might imagine. As passionate as sports fans are, they still represent a minority of the viewing public.

YES regularly is the most-watched RSN in the country - and the most costly for distributors to carry - even though Yankees ratings generally have been lower in recent seasons than they were in the 2000s.

But YES' other local pro team, the Nets, has averaged extraordinarily low ratings so far this season, giving Comcast the leverage to take action now rather than angering Yankees fans during the baseball season.

Fox, the majority owner of YES, and Comcast have been in negotiations for months while extending their former deal through the end of the baseball season.

"Comcast's reputation for poor customer satisfaction is well known, but this surprise development represents a new low," YES said in a statement.

Comcast is a part owner of SNY, the Mets' primary cable outlet.

Distributors have tried to hold the line on price increases for rights fees in an era of increasing concern over cord-cutting and the long-term viability of the bundled cable programming model.

Cablevision, the dominant cable company on Long Island, owns Newsday.

Hal Steinbrenner, the Yankees' managing general partner, said Wednesday, "I can't really comment on that. Obviously Fox is running the show. They own 80 percent of the company. They're the ones dealing with all that. I have not been involved, to be honest with you."

Asked if he fears the dispute might drag into the baseball season, he said, "We'll just have to see. There are many competent guys working on this right now. We'll just have to see where it ends up."

By Neil Best

neil.best@newsday.com@sportswatch

Neil Best first worked at Newsday in 1982, returned in 1985 after a detour to Alaska and has been here since, specializing in high schools, college basketball, the NFL and most recently sports media and business.